dirty airlock - replace or leave on secondary

[drudini11]

Had some additional fermentation in secondary and clouded up the 3 piece airlock........not in any danger of clogging just discolored the sanitized water that's in there so it's a beautiful shade of brown. Is this something that I need to bother replacing with a clean/sanitized airlock or am I fine to simply leave the current one in place? Going to be in secondary for the next 5-6 weeks if that makes a difference.

 

[Captain Damage]

Clean it.

 

[BamaRooster]

+1 on the capt..... clean it sanitize it and replace. If your fermentation is still going strong you may consider a blow off tube.

 

[Wvbrewer77]

I would clean it too, since the CO2 cusion will refill when you seal it back up.

 

[drudini11]

Thanks. Figured it made sense to clean and sanitize.......at the very least looks much nicer now

 

[Captain Damage]

Think of it like this: you can't over-clean your equipment. You can't over-sanitize. Whenever the question is "Should I clean it?" the answer is always YES.

Another way to think of it: would you rather take a couple of seconds cleaning to make sure your beer comes out good, or take a chance that it will go bad? True, it's a small chance - maybe one in a thousand. But the seconds it takes to rinse out an airlock (or whatever the cleaning task at hand is) compared to the hours of enjoyment you and your friends will get out of your beer is nothing.